ATA 5

Assignment Takeaway 5 required us to perform random acts of kindness for strangers throughout the week and then reflect on our experiences. This assignment stretched me outside of my comfort zone for sure, as I typically keep to myself. It’s not that I don’t like helping people, but I am an introvert and tend to stay in my own little world. The assignment was good for me as I was “forced” into reaching out and helping others. One of my most meaningful experiences was helping a young mother and her two young children at Walmart. They were behind me in line and she was obviously struggling with a full cart and her infant and toddler. I let her go ahead of me and entertained the toddler while she got checked out. She was very grateful. This was very meaningful to me because I was the mom of two young children at one point in my life and I know how this would have made me feel. My daughter has a young child and I would hope that someone would help her, too.

When I reflect on how to link this assignment to another learning experience, I would link it back to the chapter on social influence in our text. There’s a section on emotional contagion. The concept is related to mirror neurons and how when we observe other’s emotional reactions, we feel the same emotion. I hope that by helping others it made them feel a sense of satisfaction like I did, and therefore cause them to be kind to someone else.

I chose this image because everyone should do at least one nice thing for someone else in a day. We never know what impact we will make on someone’s life because of it.

ATA 4

Assignment 4 required us to take a love style questionnaire with either a current relationship in mind, or a potential future one. I chose my husband as the subject of the questionnaire as we’ve been together for ten years. There were six different loves styles and the lower your score for that style is an indicator that you are high in that love style. The different styles were eros, ludus, storge, pragma, mania, and agape. I scored lowest for storge, which indicates that my relationship is one of friendship and passion.

In reflecting on applying this to another course or earlier topic, I would have to say I would apply it to the chapter on the Self. In order to love someone else you have to be able to love yourself. Part of that is knowing who you are and constantly evaluating our feelings and emotions. We also discussed this with the emotional intelligence. I think it all fits together.

I felt this was an accurate result considering how long we’ve been together. It was interesting to see the results, though. I’ve never really thought about my “style” of love before. I even talked with my husband about the results and he agreed that it definitely fit us. It also made me realize what style of love I wasn’t, which was ludus. Ludus style of love is manipulative and deceptive, which I definitely am not. It made me realize that what we have is healthy and good. It’s nice to be married to my best friend.

ATA 3

The requirements of assignment 3 were to watch a video of Michael Richards having a racist rant at a stand-up comedian show. We were to watch the video and write our response about whether or he was being racist or just mean. There is a current debate in our society about whether using racial slurs is reflective of someone being racist. It seems like not a week goes by that we don’t hear about some public figure making a racial slur and then losing their job or position over it. We learned about racism earlier in this class and the difference between prejudice and racism. Many people think the two are the same and they are not. Prejudice isn’t necessarily harmful, while racism always is. Prejudice doesn’t always involve a racial or ethnic group compared to racism. These are important distinctions to make.

When it comes to using racial slurs it is never okay, whether in anger or jest. Richards swears he is not racist and that he was just angry. I don’t think one can use racial slurs and not be somewhat racist. I have a biracial granddaughter and I know she will be subjected to racism. In my opinion if someone uses racial slurs in regards to her, they are racist and it’s not okay. We all need to be racially aware. No one group of individuals should feel like they are less than another group because of the color of their skin.

I chose this image because we can learn a lot from children. They aren’t born seeing color.

ATA 1

       Assignment 1 was based on the different types of heuristics. If I relate it to another course I’ve taken, it would be sociology. We had to do a class project where we went to observe people at the mall. It was a very interesting experience. I like to people watch, but I’d never had to do it for a class assignment before. The point was to observe groups, or individuals, and to try to figure them out. We also had to self-evaluate our own stereotypes related to what we observed.

I find that heuristics and stereotypes have many overlapping characteristics, especially the availability and representative heuristics. It is easy to place people in certain boxes based on our previous experiences and knowledge. First impressions, like Chapter 3 in the text talks about, are very hard to overcome. We typically instantly form impressions of people, whether in real life or online. Those are hard to overcome. Knowing this, I try hard to readjust my first impressions if necessary.

Back to the mall example, it was opening night for a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We were in the Food Court right outside the movie theater entrance. People really got into the movie and came dressed as pirates and even engaged in pirate-like behavior. It was highly entertaining, but hard to perceive anything about who they were other than they liked the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise and had no issues going out in public dressed and acting like pirates.

Other people I observed were families. So many of them were eating in silence. In that case I did make a judgement that either the mother and father were fighting or didn’t like their children. Perhaps the couples had been together so long they ran out of things to talk about. In fact, none of these could have been true. Perhaps they were just tired or distracted by all the pirates. My takeaway is that we shouldn’t be so quick to try and judge people or situations. We should take a step out of our own shoes and try to think about the whole picture, try to perceive more than what we first observe.

https://www.thethings.com/also-15-hilarious-memes-showcase-hypocrite-us/